The new year...

Like many other things in my life, I've neglected this blog, after only two entries. However, like many other things in my life, I tend to come back to things. I've a bit of a guilt complex that way.

So it's 2008. I remember when the millennium turned and I used to marvel each year at how we were in the 2000s. How surreal, I thought. This year, I confess, feels like just another year. The 2000s have lost their novelty.

Also, I've made no resolutions this year, knowing all too well what fools those can make us. I think they come with good intentions and are healthy, but they're only beneficial of course if you follow through with them.

So this year (after, I confess, a bit of a jaded end to my last year, 2007) I've decided no resolutions for me. This said, I do believe there are things we can do for ourselves that are pro-active as we go along. No need to pre-plan. Ideas are a dime a dozen, as they say, and will pop up sporadically.

So far I've managed to start playing my baratone ukeleli again -- another one of those "things" I'd let slide. I've always known my outlets and therapies were creative in nature, but I thought beyond writing that my investments in the arts were more appreciative than participatory. I've experimented briefly with oil painting, and have a friend's video camera collecting dust awaiting my independent film brainwave. Other than my writing, though, there is one thing I've discovered is a great distraction for me and there was a time I never believed I could succeed at it. Playing music. Mind you, I've a long way to go, and am by no means that talented, but I love the feeling when you get a song and feel yourself improving. I've never been a very goal oriented person, but I've always understood that having them might help me organize my life, and even my inner life, a little better.

Learning songs on my baritone ukeleli gives me goals, albeit it small ones. Where else can you start but small? And I've learned a little secret about the baritone uke which has come in quite handy when seeking out songs. The strings on the baritone uke are the same strings as the first four of a guitar. A friend taught me that. So, given a sheet of guitar music (more readily available and varietal than ukeleli music) I just ignore the top two strings when learning the chords.

That ukeleli collected dust (like the video camera) in my parents' garage for years. I received it as a passing (from 6th grade to 7th) gift from my folks when I was twelve. I wanted it. That year I'd attended a music conference through school, during which I got to fool around on one (a soprano ukeleli, albeit; there is a difference). Being young and having parents kind enough not to force me to practice or take any sort of lessons, I strummed ear-piercingly away on my baritone uke then shortly gave up.

The lesson? The old quote: "If you love something [or, in my case, just don't have the patience to play it!] set it free. If it comes back to you it's yours. If it doesn't..." well, you know the rest.

The Time That Was

When I was living three provinces away in Halifax eight or nine years ago, my parents sent me a book during the holidays called Home for Christmas. There's a poem in it I keep returning to. Christmas strikes a deep nostalgia in me because I am lucky enough to carry happy memories from childhood. We'd tromp through tree farms with my dad and help him cut down a specially chosen spruce. On Christmas Eve, my sister and I read Clement C. Moore aloud and couldn't get to sleep. We were scared that if we didn't, Santa wouldn't come. (Actually, I think I was scared of Santa Claus himself -- of actually seeing him. Or maybe I was scared of not seeing him?) In the morning we felt delightful lumpiness at our feet where our stockings lay on the bed.
My dad also smoked a pipe.


THE TIME THAT WAS
Robert B. Richards

Lights with circuit-breakers wait on shelves.
Our puss is neutered and she has no claws;
Ask us why, we'll tell you it's because
We don't want cat or kids to harm themselves.

A purring clock accumulates its twelves;
Come the time, there'll be no pregnant pause
Before angelic chimes cascade; no laws
Say Christmas is for either Christ or elves.

But, oh, there was a time this time was ripe
And real, and rife with, yes, both love and joy;
Santa tamped tobacco in his pipe
And Jesus was no ordinary boy
But mad with love for sods like you and me
And dangerous candles on a living tree.

Thinking about blogs, I've questioned whether they are a suitable outlet for me. I'm a bit old fashioned, in that I sometimes worry computers filter out the soul in everything. Hypocritically, I use my laptop daily, sometimes to excess. I don't really believe anything can take the soul out of anything else, unless you let it. I'm going to give this a shot.